Spelling pronunciation

Not to be confused with pronunciation spelling.

A spelling pronunciation more closely renders the sounds represented by a word's spelling than the traditional pronunciation and is often considered incorrect (for example "victuals"). The traditional pronunciation of a common word is often more widespread than its spelling pronunciation. The traditional pronunciations of even rare words are often still in use, especially by educated people. Many spelling pronunciations become more common and therefore eventually standard (for example "waistcoat").

A spelling pronunciation often reflects an even older pronunciation than the traditional one, especially in the case of compound words (for example "waistcoat", "cupboard", and "forehead") and words with silent letters (for example "often". A silent letter does not however always represent an older pronunciation and may have only been added to show the word's etymology, in other words its form in a different language (for example "victuals"). Silent letters were sometimes also added on the basis of erroneous etymologies, as in the case of the word "island".

Prevalence and causes of spelling pronunciation

Large numbers of easily noticeable spelling pronunciations only occur in languages such as English where spelling does a poor job of indicating (current) pronunciation. Spelling pronunciations however arise in all languages because most people only get enough education to know how to read and write and not enough to understand that spelling is always a less than perfect indication of pronunciation, in other words, most people do not clearly understand the relationship between spelling and pronunciation.

On the other hand, spelling pronunciations are also evidence of the reciprocal effects of spoken and written speech on each other. Most people naively believe that speech is a "corrupt" form of the written language. Though there is some truth in this in the sense that many spellings represent older forms and corresponding older pronunciations (which are however not better or less "corrupt"), many spellings are not etymologically correct, and even in cases where they are correct, their historically correct pronunciation would require knowledge not available to most people.

So it can be claimed that speakers who use a spelling pronunciation are naive and have misunderstood the relationship between written and spoken language. Since however most people believe that the written language is "more correct", this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the written language affecting and changing the spoken language (because it was incorrectly, i.e. inadequately, depicting it).

Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations

• often, pronounced with /t/, which is in fact a reversion to the 15th century pronunciation, though the pronunciation without /t/ is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers. Older dictionaries do not even list the pronunciation with /t/, though the 2nd edition of the OED does (and the first edition notes the pronunciation with the comment that it is prevalent in the south of England and "often used in singing"; see the Dictionary of American Regional English for contemporaneous citations discussing the status of the competing pronunciations) The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as whistle, listen, and soften, where the t remains universally unpronounced.
• forehead once rhymed with horrid, but is now pronounced with the second syllable as /hɛd/ by 85% of Americans and 65% of people in Britain. This is in fact a reversion to its original pronunciation.
• clothes was historically pronounced the same way as the verb close ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes" --Herrick), but many speakers now insert a /ð/, pronouncing a voiced th. This is in fact a reversion to its 15th century pronunciation.
• salmon, occasionally pronounced with /l/.
• falcon is now nearly always pronounced with /l/, and just 3% of speakers have no /l/. The /l/ was lacking in the old pronunciation: compare French faucon and the older English spellings faucon and fawcon. This may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin.
• alm, balm, calm, palm, psalm; often now pronounced with /l/ in the United States. In the United Kingdom, the traditional /ɑːm/ pronunciation continues to prevail.
• comptroller, often pronounced with /mp/; accepted pronunciation is "controller" (the mp spelling is based on the mistaken idea that the word has something to do with comp(u)tare "count, compute", but it comes from contre-roll "file copy", both the verb and its agent noun meaning "compare originals and file copies").
• ye the article, pronounced as if spelled with a y instead of the printer's mark for Þ, the letter thorn.
• taking the insular flat-topped g of northern scripts as a z- in names like Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel (in the last with the value of /j/ originally).
• tortilla and other words from Spanish with the double-L pronounced /l/ instead of /j/ (the latter being the closest approximation to the sound in Spanish); similarly the Italian-sourced maraschino (cherry) with /ʃ/ instead of /sk/.
• victuals "vittles" whose -c- (for a consonant lost long before the word was borrowed from French) was reintroduced on etymological grounds, and sometimes pronounced with /kt/.
• The pronunciation of waistcoat as waist-coat is now more common than the previous pronunciation weskit.
• conduit, historically pronounced /ˈkɒndɪt/ or /ˈkʌndɪt/, is now nearly always /ˈkɒnd^juːɪt/, or /ˈkɑndwɪt/ or /ˈkɑnduwɪt/ in the United States.
• covert, historically pronounced /ˈkʌvɚt/ (reflecting its link with the verb cover). Today usually /ˈkoʊvɚt/.
• medicine, historically pronounced with two syllables but now quite often with three (some speakers use two when they mean medicaments and three when they mean medical knowledge; the pronunciation with three syllables is standard in the United States).
• Bartholomew, formerly pronounced /ˈbartəlmi/, is now /barˈθɒləmju/.
• Anthony (< Lat. Antonius), now (in USA) /ˈænθəni/.
• Numerous place-names with traditional ("old-fashioned") pronunciations have been displaced by ones influenced by the spelling: St. Louis, formerly /sænt ˈluːwiː/ now /seɪnt ˈluːɪs/, Papillion (Nebraska), formerly /pæpijoʊ/ now /pəˈpiljən/, Beatrice (Nebraska) formerly and still somewhat currently /biˈjætrəs/, now /ˈbijətrəs/. Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, is now pronounced /mɒntˈpiːliər/ instead of the French-influenced /mõpelie/.
• Sir George Everest's surname is pronounced /ˈiːvrɨst/. The mountain named after him – Mount Everest – is generally pronounced /ˈɛvᵊrɨst/.
• Interjections such as tsk tsk! or tut tut! (a pair of dental clicks), now commonly /ˈtɪsk ˈtɪsk/ and /ˈtʌt ˈtʌt/.
• The words arctic, antarctic, and Antarctica. These were originally pronounced without /k/, but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The "c" was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent.

Spelling pronunciation vs. analogical pronunciation

In some cases, we cannot tell if a pronunciation is a true spelling pronunciation. The alternative is that a word is being pronounced analogically, in essence as the "sum of its parts". Thus, forehead is commonly pronounced as a sequence of fore plus head, instead of the historically earlier "forrid"; and waistcoat is commonly pronounced as a sequence of waist and coat, instead of the historically earlier "weskit".

Opinions about spelling pronunciation

Spelling pronunciations give rise to varied opinions. Often those who retain the old pronunciation consider the spelling pronunciation to be a mark of ignorance or insecurity. Those who use a spelling pronunciation may not be aware that it is one, and consider the historically authentic version to be slovenly, since it "slurs over" a letter. Conversely, the users of some innovative pronunciations such as "Febuary" (for February) may regard the historically (and phonetically) authentic version as a pedantic spelling pronunciation.

Fowler reports that in his day there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and "speak as you spell". According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), already in the 17th century there was beginning an "intellectual" trend in England to "pronounce as you spell". This of course presupposes a standard spelling system which was in fact beginning to form at that time. Similarly, quite a large number of "corrections" slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.

Others would argue that this trend, though understandable from a socio-psychological point of view, is, from a strictly linguistic perspective, irrational, since writing was invented to represent the sounds of the language and not vice versa. According to this belief, there is no good reason to "speak as one spells", but there are many good reasons to "spell as one speaks", i.e., to reform the orthography of a language whenever it does not render its pronunciation clearly and unambiguously – which is the task of a writing system. How easy such a reform would be in practice is of course quite another matter.

A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, i.e., pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonematic system of the language that accepts them: an example of this process is garage ([ɡaʀaːʒ] in French) sometimes pronounced [ˈɡæɹɪd͡ʒ] in English. Such adaptations are quite natural, and often preferred by speech-conscious and careful speakers.

Spelling pronunciations in children and foreigners

Children who read a great deal often produce spelling pronunciations, since they have no way of knowing, other than the spelling, how the rare words they encounter are correctly pronounced. Well-read second language learners are likewise vulnerable to producing spelling pronunciations.

However, since there are many words which one reads far more often than one hears, the problem also affects adult native-language speakers. This, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation often becomes standard in the next.

In other languages

In French, the modern pronunciation of the 16th century French author Montaigne as [mɔ̃tɛɲ], rather than the contemporary [mɔ̃taɲ], is a spelling pronunciation.

When English club was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was /klab/, as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became /klyb/ on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe, /klœb/, deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in Canada remains /klʏb/. Similarly, shampooing "product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was /ʃɑ̃puiŋ/; now it is /ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃/

In Hebrew, there is a vowel called patach genuvah, consisting of an "a" sign placed underneath a final guttural but pronounced before it: an example is ruach (meaning 'spirit), which looks like *rucha. Where the final consonant is a sounded he (h), many speakers do indeed place the vowel after it, mistakenly pronouncing Eloah (meaning God) as "Eloha" and gavoah (meaning high) as "gavoha". Other examples of spelling pronunciations are the Sephardic "kal" for "kol" (meaning all) and "tsahorayim" for "tsohorayim" (meaning noon): see Sephardic Hebrew language.

In Swedish, there has been a tendency towards spelling pronunciation in many words. The plural ending spelled -or, which was formerly often pronounced /-er/, is now often pronounced /-ur/.

In Spanish, the ⟨ch⟩ in some German words and surnames is pronounced /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ instead of /x/. Bach is correctly pronounced [bax], and kuchen is [ˈkuxen], but Mach is [maʃ] or [matʃ], Rorschach is [ˈrorʃax], and Kirchner is [ˈkirʃner] or [ˈkirtʃner]. Other spelling pronunciations are club pronounced [kluβ], iceberg pronounced [iθeˈβer] in Spain (in America, it's pronounced [ˈaizβerɡ]), and folclor and folclore as translations of folklore, pronounced [folˈklor] and [folˈkloɾe]. In the French word élite the acute accent is often misinterpreted as a Spanish stress mark and the word is pronounced [ˈelite].

Books

• See the index entries under "spelling pronunciation" from Leonard Bloomfield, Language (originally published 1933; current edition 1984, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; ISBN 81-208-1195-X).
• Most of the etymologies and spelling histories above are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary.

See also

• Folk etymology
• Heterography
• Mispronunciation
• Orthography
• Spelling reform